More than Labor Day or Valentine’s Day or even Fourth of July, the Christmas holidays get everyone humming and toe-tapping. It can be a simple carol, Springsteen warning you that “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” or the beauty of Handel’s “Messiah.”

And if you’re lucky enough to live within earshot of a community choir, the holidays are a special treat – whether wandering the streets of Wellsboro in Tioga County during its Dickens of a Christmas celebration or rejoicing in Blair County with the beautiful “Gloria,” accompanied by a dozen brass instruments.

While the holidays bring the groups together for their annual December shows; their love of music keeps them singing year-round. Hundreds of community choruses regularly bring joy to audiences throughout Pennsylvania.

You’ll find them in the town square, local church sanctuaries, and schools, at the community festivals, and in assisted living facilities – “any time someone asks for a song,” according to one chorister with the Wellsboro Men’s Chorus. (And, sometimes, people don’t even have to ask; the guys in Wellsboro have been known to break into song at the local pub.)

In small towns, these are the folks who are bringing the big sounds.

Hitting the right notes

Some choirs have been performing for years – Blair County, home of the Blair Concert Chorale, can trace its community choir roots back to the 1930s – while others are just getting started. The East Berlin Community Singers in Adams County first performed just over a decade ago for the town’s 250th anniversary. For 30 years, the women in Wellsboro watched their husbands sing in the Men’s Chorus before starting their own group.
 

“They talked about it for several years, and finally in January 1975, they asked the Men’s Chorus’ pianist, Pat Davis, to be their pianist and director,” says Diana Frazier, one of the chorus’s current directors. “They met on Thursday nights when the men were finished practicing.” The group quickly grew to more than a dozen, and today, numbers close to 50, with one original member still singing.

Talk of a community choir in Clearfield County goes back 100 years, with performances documented through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Then, for reasons unknown, the group took a 20- to 25-year hiatus. A decade ago, two Clearfield artisans decided to revitalize it.

“We just sang hymns and some basic arrangements; it was pretty simple,” says Mason Strouse, who along with Catherine Mandell brought a dozen or so singers together under the reorganized Clearfield Arts Studio Theatre (CAST) in 2015. “A new board of directors came on board and saved CAST; out of that grew this choir as well.”

Ten years later – and now known as the Clearfield Choral Society – you wouldn’t recognize the group.

“We were borrowing music, and we had performances for 40 or 50 people,” remembers Strouse, who also serves as Clearfield’s mayor. “Now, with 50-plus singers, we're contracting with musicians and have 200 or 300 people at a concert with online ticket sales. I couldn't have imagined this is where it would be now.”

A community within a community

The resurgence is not just in Pennsylvania. In a 2019 survey commissioned by Chorus America, an astonishing number emerged: More than 54 million people sing in one of the 275,000 choruses around the country. That’s more than 16% of the population, or four out of every 25 Americans. Among the findings, not surprisingly, were that adults who sing in choruses report significant personal benefits, including feeling less lonely and more connected to others; that choral singers are remarkably strong contributors to their communities; and that older chorus members report both a better quality of life and better overall health than the general public.

It's definitely more than the music.

“We have people from many, many walks of life, people from different professions and different ability levels,” says Jacob Mandell, Clearfield Choral Society’s artistic director and conductor. “For a lot of people, the choral society is their social outlet, the place where they can see their friends and do something that's very meaningful for them.”

It’s tough, though, to sit and chat during rehearsal, so Steering Committee member Brandy Dixon is working on creating opportunities outside of rehearsals for members to get together. “We offer a little community in and of itself, where people make connections,” she says. “We want to provide that type of space, where people can come with their friends to have fun.”

The bonds are strong – even if singers only see each other once a week for an hour or two – and can be far reaching.
 

The Blair Concert Chorale also draws members from Bedford, Cambria and Huntingdon counties, which cover territories served by several rural electric cooperatives. Its director, Christopher Bartley, makes the 90-minute drive weekly to Altoona to lead the group. Clearfield Choral’s members, some served by DuBois-based United Electric Cooperative, are primarily Curwensville and Grampian area residents; however, some make the trek from Brookville, Brockway and as far away as Phillipsburg in neighboring Centre County.

And in the Northern Tier, members of the Wellsboro Men’s and Women’s Choruses crisscross Tioga County and Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative territory to get to the county seat for rehearsals. “We have singers from as far away as Liberty, up in the valley in Elkland, and when Mansfield disbanded its chorus, a lot of the members joined Wellsboro,” says Tom Walrath, a recently retired 42-year member of the Men’s Chorus.

Once together, each group finds its own sense of family.

“We truly look out for each other,” says Diana Frazier of the Wellsboro’s Women’s Chorus, also known as “Sisters in Song.” “If someone is ill, the chorus sends a card, and many send individual cards. One member broke her shoulder, and meals were supplied for her.”

It’s much the same with the Clearfield Choral Society, Mason Strouse says: “When someone has a baby, we’re cheering with them, and when someone, unfortunately, experiences a loss, we’re grieving with them.”

As with any family, the choral groups are multi-generational. You’ll often find parents singing next to children, spouses harmonizing, and young and old coming together to make that joyful noise.

“We’ve had 20-year-olds, and we’ve had 85-year-olds,” says Jane Johnston, director of the East Berlin Community Singers, a retired Bermudian Springs High School choral director and an Adams Electric Cooperative member. “I’ve got some of my former students and some of their parents singing with us and maybe even their grandparents.”

In Clearfield County, some families carpool to rehearse at the Presbyterian church.

“We are truly an intergenerational choir that brings in high school students from the county to sing with people of all ages, abilities and professions, and we have a lot of families,” Jacob Mandell says. “Just last year, we had six or seven different families. Both my parents sing, and my mother is involved as the assistant. It’s very special that we bring in the generations.”

Wanted: a love of music

And not all members are “singers.” Many community choirs don’t hold auditions; participants are only required to have a love of music and performance and, hopefully, they can also carry a tune. If not, it’s taken in stride. The directors, many of whom are former and/or current music instructors, love to teach.

Strouse says he leaves each Clearfield Choral rehearsal with a sense of accomplishment. “They’re very good about teaching people musicality and how to sing,” he says of Director Jacob Mandell and his mom Catherine, who has handed over her conducting duties, but still helps on occasion. “It’s very rewarding to watch the members who didn’t study music or maybe it's the first time they've ever done something like this. They are nurtured and become very productive members of the choir. It is life-changing for them in a way.”
 

“As we have evolved, it’s helpful if the person has a sense of knowing what line they might be looking at in the music,” says East Berlin’s Johnston, who constantly challenges her vocalists. “I want them to grow. Sometimes, I’ll throw in a piece where they have to learn Latin or French; I try to make it vocally challenging as well, while keeping it audience friendly.”

A more formal organization, the Blair Concert Chorale does audition its members, according to Operations Manager Jane Gable. Formed in 1987, the group is a combination of the former Keystone Chorale and the Altoona Choral Society.

“This organization has been – in one form or another – a part of our community for a very long time. It's kind of reinvented itself, but over the years, it has always been an audition choir, a rather serious musical choir,” she says.

And that, they are finding, is broadening the membership. Gable is delighted that recent college graduates are returning home and joining the group. “I'm very proud that we are seeing our average age decline … that those young people who have been involved in college choirs have started to join; they want to come back and audition,” Gable says. “Our newest members are under 30.”

All of the choruses, of course, encourage the younger generation to join in song. Investing in that future and its community, the green-jacketed Wellsboro Men’s Chorus funds three scholarships at the local high school. The Lester Haner Memorial Scholarship goes to a graduate majoring in any area of music, the Ellsworth Robert Memorial Voice Scholarship to a graduate majoring in voice, and the Todd Antoine Memorial Scholarship to a graduating member of the school’s Men’s Chorus.

But just because they are “community” choruses doesn’t mean they stay there. The groups take their music around the state – and around the world.

For the second time, the Wellsboro Men’s Chorus opened South Williamsport’s Little League World Series with the national anthem this past August, and the East Berlin Community Singers traveled to Normandy, France, last year for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Performances at the Liberation Memorial Ceremony and the D-Day Memorial Public Ceremony were followed by a trip to Paris and a final performance at the LaMadeleine Church.

The trip, of course, was an experience of a lifetime, but then, just getting the opportunity to sing is pretty special, too.

“I firmly believe that in a true community choir, you can take an ensemble and it has the ability to soar,” Clearfield’s Jacob Mandell says. “And I believe that choral singing is one of the most human, the most soulful and spiritual things we can do.

“When you work together with a group of people you don’t know, you’re bonded by that musical connection, and there’s an artistic level you achieve just by singing together,” he adds. “There’s a catharsis in that; there’s a feeling in that.”